


Necessary Changes

by etirabys



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 10:26:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16173218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etirabys/pseuds/etirabys
Summary: [Abandoned] Cloud is a teenaged mutant picked up by the SOLDIER program. Awakening fully into his powers as a precog almost breaks his mind, as he must integrate multiple memories of different futures, all of which say the same thing: Sephiroth, SOLDIER's strongest mutant, has barely unlocked his full potential – and if Cloud does not somehow intervene in his path, he will destroy the world.





	Necessary Changes

After four months of disappointing inactivity on the part of the blond mutant they'd picked up in one of the mountain towns, Hojo decided to force a manifestation by putting him in an activation tank – where, in a very real sense, the boy died.

The boy's name was Cloud. This was his first personal meeting with the program's director, and there was nothing but wary deference in his manner when Hojo questioned him on his experience in the SOLDIER program. He corroborated his teachers' account that he had not manifested any abilities since his enrollment in the SOLDIER program. "To be honest, sir," the boy said softly, "I've started wondering if there might have been a mistake. Perhaps I don't belong here. Everyone else... they can do things. Not me."

Hojo shook his head impatiently. "Two SOLDIERs and their handler examined the boy you killed. Even if you don't remember doing it, you manifested powers then. It only remains to be seen whether you're a hydrokinetic or telekinetic or something else, and what will bring it out of you again."

The boy seemed to shrink in his seat. "I've tried. I've tried in class, under Mr. Gruuthuse and Bergson. I've tried with Zack – Second Class Zack Fair, I mean. And some dorm-mates have tried to shock it out of me, with... with pranks. Nothing happens."

"Perhaps you haven't had the right trigger," said Hojo.

From prior experience, he knew to sedate the subjects just a little before hooking them inside the SIA tank. The tank of last resort, he'd heard the lab technicians call it, although not (they thought) in his hearing. It took almost half an hour for the techs to set everything up correctly, get out of the room, and make sure the monitoring equipment was functioning. From another building entirely, Hojo watched the video feed that the techs had set up. When he saw the boy's lashes flutter open, he gave the command to start the session.

The survival instinct activation tank stimulated the body's pain receptors and endocrine system at once. An intravenous delivery system shot a chemical cocktail into the subject's bloodstream, evoking a massive adrenal response that pumped stress hormones throughout his body. Inside the tank, the boy started spasming. Hojo had tested a milder version of the tank on himself a few years ago – it felt like falling from a ledge, getting into a car accident, and running from a mugger with a knife, all at once. Every pathway in the brain that existed to recognize and react to danger lit up at once. Scientists weren't supposed to operate on hunches, but after his experience with the device, he'd known that he'd discovered _the_ way to artificially trigger dormant powers that, irritatingly, it took some mutants years to develop without interventions.

Hojo had watched mutants teleport out of the tank, set the lab on fire, or shatter equipment with their screams. It was exciting every time, to see what a subject was capable of under stress. But minutes ticked by, and the blond boy did none of these – he simply shook and gibbered. Hojo, staring intently at the screen, never saw anything to alter his grim disappointment. He ordered the end of the session after fifteen minutes. Relieved lab techs cut power to the tank and turned off the feed.

Hojo went to the tank room with them afterwards, more out of thoroughness than optimism. As expected, the subject was unconscious. The room was unchanged – the subject had failed to affect reality in any useful way, even the water that Hojo had so helpfully left around in the room. Hojo supervised the subject's transfer to the infirmary, where blood would be drawn and analyzed, and the subject brought back to normal health over the course of several weeks. In the infirmary, he brusquely relayed care instructions to the nurses, who rarely dealt with patients who'd been in the activation tank for the maximum duration.

When Hojo entered the infirmary, the pride of his career and the star of the SOLDIER program was there for his weekly checkup, holding a book in one hand. The other arm was connected to a machine that filtered certain cells out of his bloodstream and monitored how quickly they were replenished. Hojo felt a flash of pleasure and pride at having automated those tests.

Sephiroth's gaze followed the gurney, and the unconscious boy on it, without any particular affect. After talking to the nurses about failed mutant's care, Hojo went over to stand by him and check the machine readouts. He curtly answered Sephiroth's unspoken question: "A new recruit – a potential hydrokinetic, but unpromising. He collapsed in the SIA tank."

"It seems that the experience was too much for him," Sephiroth said blandly. This was the closest he came to criticism. Hojo elected to ignore it, flicking through data provided by the machine interface, taking pleasure in reviewing a fruitful experiment after the morning's disappointment.

When Sephiroth's cool stare did not falter, Hojo said, "The boy is dross, Sephiroth. It takes a hundred like him to create a gem like you. Don't concern yourself with what happened to him."

He put the emphasis of command into the last sentence. "I won't concern myself," said Sephiroth, and finally looked away from Hojo, from the blood monitor, from the blond boy unconscious a few bed away. He started to read the little poetry book he held in one hand, flipping the pages with his mind alone, as if the rest of the world did not exist.

 

* * *

 

Something _had_ happened in the tank.

The moment Cloud's powers opened up a door in his mind, a hundred thousand eventualities of the ways he could die in the next ten seconds slammed into him. Cloud screamed brokenly, and heard the echo in more dimensions than he was used to perceiving – multiple versions of his own scream assailed his auditory feed, competing to be processed, competing to be real. Time, rather than being a line on which one proceeded unidirectionally, was suddenly like a plane he could overlook. Reality was hourglass-shaped. Towards him rushed all the threads of possible futures – or were they _all_ real? – that could proceed from the present moment. Behind him, symmetrically, rushed out all the possible pasts that could have produced the present.

Instead of resting on that single point,  _the present_ , Cloud's mind dangled across hundreds or thousands of visible timelines, unable to cohere into a unitary entity. It felt like the architecture of his brain was being cored out to make space for the capacity to understand this. To hold all this in his head.

He was unable to focus on one event stream, to return to being someone who lived in only one timeline.

At some point, he became aware that the excruciating fear and physical pain of the present had ended. The sudden absence of pain was bliss, but he remained disintegrated as a person. Over the course of what could have been minutes or days, he came to realize that he had multiple incompatible memories. He was a trainee who hadn't exhibited any powers for four months since joining; he was second class SOLDIER who'd moved quickly through the ranks; he was a middle-ranking member of an anti-ShinRa terrorist group. Memories from life as a rogue mutant, memories from life as a lab experiment. Multiple first meetings with Zack. All these different memories came bundled with different desires and intentions, too – Cloud could no longer tell if he was the kind of person who wanted power, or a life of solitude, or a family, or normality.

Various futures and pasts coexisted chaotically in his mind, and he struggled to orient himself in a single present.

One of the most traumatic aspects of this experience was that, despite being alive, he had at least a dozen different memories of being killed. In most of those memories, the killer was the same person: Sephiroth, the star of the SOLDIER program.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am starting / posting this fic after a long period of failing to write fiction. There's a high probability I'll abandon this story, and even if I don't, the pacing is probably going to be wonky because I'm aiming to "write something, dammit" rather than "write something good". With that said, I'm excited about this idea and am committing to the gamble of posting it.
> 
> Also, confession: I've never played FF7, or any kind of videogame. I read a massive amount of FF7 fanfiction ten years ago, and have been relying on fan culture osmosis, googling character wikis, and one friend who knows more about canon.


End file.
